Sometimes I wish our return packages could gather us around a blazing campfire and tell us the tale of where they have been. I bet there would be some great tales told. This package for example. It left the farm July 18th, 2006 for Athens and arrived back at the farm a few days ago. This means it has been AWOL for nearly seven months. Seven months!

So here it sits, torn, shredded, examined, decorated, stained, stamped, knotted, rewrapped and crushed. I only hope it had some fun on its journey there and back again. I like knowing hoping fantasizing this package saw the Parthenon and caught a glimpse of the wine dark sea of Homer.

It’s snowing here today. It’s snowing really hard. We have a foot of fresh snow already with a couple more feet expected before dawn tomorrow. It’s beautiful and I will enjoy this day, but truth be told, I am ready for spring. I sit looking out at the snow covered gardens taking a mind journey towards the next few months when this garden world will come to life again and all the green glories of spring will surround us. It’s a lovely mind journey for this snowy day.

As is my wildly optimistic mind journey about this package. The poor thing probably never saw anything of the world but the inside of planes, trains, and the untidy package rooms of a series of national and international post offices. Sometimes mind journeys are like that, the reality is not as good as the mind journey. So I promise that before this poor battered box and its contents wend their way to various recycle bins here, I will show this package a beautiful view of this snow storm. It is the least this package deserves after such a noble and prolonged effort to get to those Greek cats who wanted some Flower Essences.

And not to leave you in suspense. This was one of three different packages for the same order that we sent to these Greek cats by different methods and yes, eventually these cats got their Flower Essences.

As far as this tired box of lovelies goes, I can only hope that sometime in the last seven months, the Elementals holding the vibration of these bottles intact and the Angels watching over these bottles en route made an executive decision that the Essences were never going to get to their intended destination and that it would be the right thing to do to share the vibrations of these Essences with someone or some animal that had a close encounter with the package.

That is a much more likely mind journey than the one about the package sipping ouzo on the steps of the Acropolis. And like my mind journeys about spring, it one that makes me smile. Can’t you just picture it? Somewhere out there is a greek postal official that had a close encounter with these Flower Essences. As he wrapped up the crushed package for the last time to return to us, he couldn’t help wondering why he was in such a good mood. But we know why. Yup, we know why.

I used to fantasize about Fabio. This was when I was young and green in judgment. This was when Fabio was young too. It was before his ” I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter” years. And that would have been a good thing because the Fabio of my former fantasies needed butter, and lots of it. In my fantasies I would picture him glowing, even steaming, in the hot sun. A strong wind would blow through his golden locks and his muscles would ripple beneath some skimpy outfit as…. he turned my compost heap.

Yes, with Fabio it was all about the compost heap. It’s long been one of those jobs that the men in my life never have time to do. It’s also one of those jobs where I am irritatingly aware that I am not as strong as a man, much as I have tried to forget this for five decades. What can I say? I desired a hunk that hankered for pitchfork activities, one I could boss around without any guilt, “See that twelve foot pile of half rotted plant material over here Fabio? Move it over to there. Thanks.” I could leave him to it and in my fantasy, I would return and he would have done all the work with a smile on his face. His hair would still look good, his muscles and clothing only more ripped than before, and of course, he would want only bread and butter or “I Can’t Believe its Not Butter” in payment.

It is with such nostalgia that I remember those childish fantasies of the last millennium. In 2007 my fantasy man is named Ned.

Ned has no life. He waits by his phone night and day, happy, even impatient, to receive my calls. He is ever ready to drop everything to take care of my needs. In fact, he is so ready, he has nothing else to do but wait for me to have a need. And I deliver. I have questions. I have snafus. I have crises. I have glitches and Ned doesn’t think any of them are too idiotic for his tender mercies.

You see, Ned is my fantasy IT man. He is my own fantasy computer demi-god. His lack of muscle tone rocks my socks. I need a man that doesn’t mind spending nineteen hours a day in a desk chair unravelling our latest technology screw ups. His fashion statement of a pocket protector tucked into the pocket of a strangely shiny olive shirt tucked into polyester flood pants would charm me. Bring on a wardrobe ready for “What Not To Wear”, because I need a man without a social life. I need a man that camps out right here 24/7 to service my technology needs. I need a Ned.

What would Ned have done this week? Well, to begin with he would have sent me out to the kitchen to have Fabio fix me a nice slice of bread and “I Can’t Believe its Not Butter” when we discovered that the research list had been deleted from the computers and that the backup of this twenty page list was two months out of date. The brief version of this boringly familiar tale is that the different versions of Microsoft word were not communicating well across our network and the research list fell victim to their communication disorder. The uncensored version of this tale involves, well, I will spare you the details.

My fantasy Ned would have known it was software upgrade time before this fracas. Ned would also have known better than to waste a whole lot of time trying to load the new UPS software upgrade, an upgrade that UPS finally called us to tell us to delete from our systems. This would be because Ned would also be psychic as well as brilliant with computers. Ned would have known when the UPS upgrade arrived that it was crap. Ned also would be the one to come in early each morning and get the computers communicating smoothly. Ned would let me sleep in while he massaged them into good behavior. I would no longer need to waste precious time wondering how computers that are not being used all night can be so messed up each dawn, needing so much TLC to cooperate for another day. Their cat fights would be Ned’s domain. I could stay in my warm bed past six without a care in the world.

Ned would also leave me free to begin to repair my strained relationship with the men in my life. Ben is fully employed now. He teaches. He coaches basketball. He is a dorm parent for fifty five teenage boys. He has a places to go and people to see. In conclusion, he has a life. I know his heart must sink when he hears from his mother. I would hate to get these calls from me too. Some of my messages are worse than gum surgery without anesthesia. One day last week I ran into him in town and told him to go home and delete his answering machine messages without listening to any of them. Sadly, he had already listened to the day’s eight message docudrama. I try to call less frequently. I really do. I spend hours trying to troubleshoot on my own. I also try to call when the technology is flowing so there is an occasional chirpy cheerful message, but these moments are few.

In fact, it is almost an out of body experience when all five six seven eight computers are working. And how did this happen, us having EIGHT computers? This technology that was supposed to simplify my life is my new full time job and I already have a two three full time jobs. Way back in the Fabio fantasy years, I thought I was going to be able to buy computer or two and then use them ’til death did us part. Instead, my guy at the computer store refers to two thirds of our machines, all of which are less than five years old, as dinosaurs as in, “This is not worth repairing, it’s a dinosaur.” And then there are the software upgrades. If I had as many upgrades as my computers get, people would think Jim had a trophy wife.

Ah, this brings us to Jim. Sadly, I do not greet him at the door at the end of his workday wrapped in saran wrap like the happy homemaker. Sadly, the arctic temperatures and the fact that he has twelve year old William in tow are not really the reasons for this restraint. The main reason is that most days I am too busy organizing my litany of technology horror stories to assemble a saran wrap outfit. Let’s face it. Every technology horror story needs an audience and he is it.

Is it any wonder that he is suddenly lingering longer and longer at curriculum assessment meetings?

So Fabio, it was nice while it lasted. Those were good fantasies, those ones down at the compost heap, but it’s over. Ned is the man. And where o where art thou Ned? I need you, yesterday. Bring the upgrades. I will bring the butter.

So you throw a garden together that is different, even weird, in a cooperative effort with Angels and Elementals. Why does it matter? Why would a funky vegetable garden be important? Why would the Angels and Elementals of the Nature kingdom care whether you did this or not? Why bother?

The dynamics of Nature in isolation from humanity and Nature being trashed by humanity are old dynamics for the planet, for humanity, and for the Angels and Elementals. It’s time for all of us to inhabit a new form. Maybe we can limp along in the old form, maybe not. In either case, it is a dead form. The planet calls us to a new level of cooperative effort for the sake of its evolution and ours too.

Cooperative efforts bring us exactly what we need for our own evolution because they expand our understanding of self. What is our spiritual work if not self realization? This is both a process of owning our shadow and also owning our divinity. If we own our shadow, we stop trashing the planet unconsciously and make atonement for what we have done. We also know ourselves more completely, the good, the bad and the ugly. If we own our divinity, we realize that we are co-creators of this planet and act accordingly. These actions as co-creators greatly expand our definition of self.

If all this bounces off as just some more mind ideas, let the possibility of working cheek by cheek with the Angels and Elementals sink into your heart and feel it in your body. Perhaps feeling the joyful possibilities will inspire you as this experience of possibility inspired me.

From the moment I heard about Findhorn, I knew cooperative efforts with the Angels and Elementals mattered. I can’t explain why I felt this so passionately, but I did. For one thing, knowing of cooperative opportunities helped transform my despair about our trashing of the planet into hope. And my experiences transformed hope into body wisdom.

Almost twenty years into my conscious cooperative work with the Angels and Elementals of Nature, I know that if even a small number of us work with these partners on cooperative garden projects, it can help Earth. A Lot. A garden like the Venus Garden is a candle going into a dark room. It offsets a lot of dark with its one seemingly small light. I know more of us can light candles. I would love us to do this for the Elementals, to restore their wavering faith in us. I would love us to do this for the Angels, who never waiver in their faith in us. But if not for the Angels and Elementals, let’s do these gardens to help each other, because the gardens really do help. Really.

I know this. It isn’t a supposition I have. In my life, it is a fact. Way back when I created my first garden with the Angels and Elementals, it wasn’t just the size and stunning beauty of the produce that surprised me. It was the number of people and animals that found themselves drawn to the gardens that surprised me. During the season of my first cooperative efforts, dozens of unfamiliar dogs arrived of their own volition in the gardens. One afternoon, two dogs from a town forty miles away hiked over the hilly terrain between their home and the gardens to check out the healing vibrations. Their people said they had never done anything like that before.

Unexpected canine visitors weren’t the only surprise visitors. One beautiful evening I looked out the window into the main vegetable garden and noticed twenty or thirty people I didn’t know wandering in the garden. This happened all the time. People wouldn’t even know how they got there. Often they wanted to stay all night. It felt so good in those gardens. More like home than home. And this was before the Flower Essences, when the farm was just a dream taking form. Our gardens were young and full of the same Flowers and vegetables in most gardens, but they didn’t feel ordinary. Opening to receive help from the consciousness of Nature took the vibrations of this land into another stratosphere. Visiting people knew it. Cats knew it. Dogs knew it. The board of selectmen of our town, who were getting complaints about traffic jams on our dirt road, knew it.

Several years into gardening with the Angels and Elementals a couple of willing gardeners and I decided to open the gardens more officially for visitors. We printed fifty posters. Half of the posters were used by our kids for wall decorations. Yet we had people come from all over the world in response to this advertising. We witnessed so many incredible moments in the gardens, moments of profound healing which are with me still. The gardens and the Angels and Elementals were so incredibly generous in their love. We had planned to have garden tours with tea two days a week. We expected maybe a dozen people each visitor’s day. Instead, crowds of people streamed in night and day, twenty four seven that summer and kept on arriving into the fall even when there was snow on the ground. A group even gathered on New Year’s Day. People are that thirsty for what pours out of the ground when you work with the Angels and Elementals. It feels that good.

We have morphed into a quieter place with few visitors now, but the love from the Angels and Elementals only expands and expands. As I have explained before, we closed the gardens because the Angels and Elementals said building up the vibrational energies in the gardens by closing the gardens was the way to create the highest vibration Flower Essences. And they said Flower Essences would bring the healing energies of the gardens to a vastly bigger group of people and animals all over the world than garden tours. I am grateful that I have gotten to be part this expanded flood of love called Green Hope Farm Flower Essences. I am grateful that something inside me was wise enough to take the Angels and Elementals up on their call to work together.

The Angels and Elementals want to work with whomever wants to work with them. There is no top secret code word needed to get on board, no grueling gauntlet to be run in order to get the chance to work with the Angels and Elementals. You need no special gifts or special tools to work together. I don’t think a garden plot is even necessary. I have seen some amazing cooperative efforts in big planters, plastic ones at that. From the beginning, we have had no high tech equipment. Our most sophisticated tool is a pair of clippers. We use organic soil amendments, sometimes this being a fancy word for manure, and a wheelbarrow. We weed by hand, usually on our knees. Some of our seeds come from the racks in the local grocery store though some come from my favorite seed house, Seed Savers Exchange. I don’t think there is anything out of range of most people about a garden with the Angels and Elementals. They are the most equal opportunity employers you could find. They just need volunteers.

To work with the Angels and Elementals in your garden is to surrender to something so profound and so healing. They will give so much more than is conceivable to your cooperative endeavour. I needed to sit here and feel this again this afternoon. I just heard some more dire news on global warming. As I settle into my heart to recall our early cooperative work together, I am reminded that the Angels and Elementals of Nature already have a clear picture of where we are, exactly how bad the global warming is, and they are ready to help us heal the Earth and ourselves, one cooperative garden project at a time.

Thank you all for your encouragements to keep on with the “Garden with the Angels and Elementals” infomercials. As you could tell, I wasn’t at all sure what was of general interest and what was as compelling as watching me sort my recyclables.

Each year, I begin planning the gardens with the Angels and Elementals by reaffirming my commitment to our cooperative life together. I literally offer up each garden to our cooperative efforts with love and thankfulness. Among other things, this means I try to empty myself of my preconceptions about what should be grown. I don’t insist that the gardens hold the vegetables I want to eat or the Flowers I particularly love to grow. I also try to let go of my attachment to previous gardens. I try to bring as little agenda to the process as possible. As best I can, I let things flow.

Then I start to put the designs onto paper for each of the gardens. When I first designed gardens with the Angels and Elementals, I used kinesiology to figure out what to plant and where to plant it. I asked yes and no questions beginning with such general questions as, “Is this garden round?” and continuing on with questions that further clarified the plan such as, “Are the rows in this round garden concentric rings? Does the first concentric circle at the center of the garden contain vegetable plants? Does it contain broccoli? How many broccoli plants? Are there other plants in this ring?” As I asked questions I would sketch the design. Often this sketch would have a life of its own, leading me to ask clarifying questions. For example, I would find myself drawing rings before asking if rings were what was planned. Then I would find out with my questions that rings were indeed the way to proceed.

This may already sound more like an Aran Island sweater project than a few simple knit stitches, HOWEVER it was simpler than it sounds and has gotten simpler and simpler as time has gone on. This is because what I noticed right away is that I already had a sense the garden was round before I asked the question and I would sense that the first row was a ring of broccoli before I asked the question. This, combined with drawings that were surprisingly accurate, made things more straightforward than I expected. The information was already downloaded before I sat down to plan anything. All I needed to do was sort of daydream my way along. It wasn’t fishing in the dark with a thousand questions about a thousand possible vegetable choices as expected. It was more a process of confirming what I already sensed.

Have you ever noticed that when you play twenty questions, you often figure out the identity of the person way faster than seems possible? Designing the gardens with the Angels and Elementals is like that. We often know the design or the plants that would most serve us to grow even before asking specific questions. Our desire to work with Nature opens the door for Nature to send in the data about what is in the highest good to grow. And our hearts stand ready to confirm this knowing. This guidance floods into our consciousness in all sorts of ways, even before we put pen to paper. Once you declare an intention to support Nature more consciously, Nature will try to get your attention in as many ways as possible. If Nature wants you to grow broccoli you are probably going to feel a literal magnetic attraction to the broccoli photos in your seed catalog. In the grocery store as well, you very well may see the broccoli and feel its pull.The Angels and Elementals are infinitely inventive and funny in the way they call my attention to what they would like me to grow. And my heart recognizes the rightness of these choices. The whole process is a reminder that talking to Nature is not talking to something outside yourself, it’s talking to a part of yourself. This oneness also means that if broccoli is what your garden needs, you can be sure it will serve your energy system as well as serve Nature and the whole Earth. It’s a brilliant win win dynamic reflecting how serving the divinity in ourselves serves the divinity in all.

Shortly after I realized that I knew the answers to my questions before asking them, my design process became more streamlined. I learned to trust what I was hearing, seeing in my mind’s eye, and drawing, even before I checked with the kinesiology to be sure I was getting the designs on paper accurately. Nowadays, I sketch and write down what I “get” and then, if I am unsure of any aspect of the design, I wait for clarity. I trust I will eventually get the design clearly and completely if I give it back to Nature/ my heart/ divinity and wait for this wise part of myself to send in clarification usually in some sassy humorous way.

What this means in practical terms is that I often start in with a garden design, get sort of an overview, and then lay the plan down to let things drift into my consciousness. This relaxed approach helps me when the overview makes me feel like the garden is going to be a bit of an energetic or technical stretch. The geometries can initially feel complicated, but easy solutions have always slid into my consciousness before or during the planting of the actual gardens. I have learned that if I just let go, the solution to what I might initially see as an insurmountable or at least challenging problem will arrive of its own accord. (And ain’t that the truth about life!)

Sometimes during this letting go process, I look at seed catalogs or gardening books to see if something jumps out at me, but solutions arrive in my consciousness in all sorts of different ways. And sometimes things jump out at me even before I know what the question is. For example, this January, I saw a photograph of a medlar tree blooming in the garden at the Cloisters in New York City. I had never spent a moment thinking about medlar trees before I saw that photograph, but afterwards I found myself frequently thinking about this beautiful flowering tree and feeling that it wanted to be here at the farm. When I asked the Angels, they told me that they hoped I would plant three medlar trees around the stone courtyard outside this office. I was not aware until then that the Angels wanted trees around this courtyard, but it feels right. I look forward to planting beautiful medlar trees here.

Another thing about my process, after years of doodling around with the garden designs, I have come to recognize the feeling in my body when a garden design is just as it is meant to be. I feel the same kind of ah ha feeling in my body that I have when I know I have arrived at just the right Flower Essence for a situation. I have learned to keep fiddling with a garden design until I get this click moment. Sometimes the click moment doesn’t come until I am planting the garden, but that is okay. Sometimes I feel it’s a bit of unknown for the Angels and Elementals what plant or configuration is going to work and that they too need decisions to be game time decisions. I have stopped thinking that changes in design mean I got things wrong. Now I know it means things are changing. Hmmmm once again, this sounds a lot like……Life.

I am going to walk you through this year’s Venus Garden to give you an example of this whole process. The Venus Garden is my annual commitment to metaphorically knit an Aran Island sweater pattern more difficult than what I think I can do. The designs of this garden are such that the Angels usually have to remind me frequently that, “It’s just knitting and purling, knitting and purling.” Over the years, I have learned to accept that I may have moments of anxiety when it comes to designing and planting the Venus Garden, but that these moments don’t have to drive me. The fact that I have so far been able to bring into form the designs I have received for this garden is confidence building as are the Angels and Elementals. As they remind me, the voice of doubt in my head is just a hangover from childhood and not based on fact.

This year when I asked about the Venus Garden design I received the message, “The theme of this year’s Venus Garden is the transmutation and purification of the Water Element, a rebirth in water…Water is the necessary matrix for the transformation of the planet…It is both a vehicle of cleansing and a vehicle of rebirth. Embrace the water. It is your ally in this transformation.”

My reaction to this news was both delight and puzzlement. I adore water. I crave lakes. I feel about my shower each morning like some people feel about their first cup of morning coffee. But we have no stream or lake or river or pond here at the farm. While I have created several water elements in various gardens, including a small pond in the Arbor Garden and another outside this office, nothing about the farm screams WATER. A Venus Garden about water sounded like both my heart’s desire and a stretch of the imagination.

I began to stretch.

And sketch. Some year’s the Venus Garden has been more up in the air and dimensional than other years. Of course, the garden is always in at least three dimensions, but some years it feels like the Angels’ designs play on the idea of many dimensions much more obviously. This is one of those years.

In my first sketch, a drawing I would gladly share if one of my children had not walked off with the digital camera, I drew seven rows coming out from the center of the garden like rays from the center of the sun. At the outer rim of the garden I connected the end of each of these rows with seven individual trellises, each triangular in shape. This sounds more complicated than it looks on paper. The Angels have had me do a lot of trellising over the years. For example, the peas have often been on trellises tied in the shapes of spider webs or spirals. These seven trellises between the rows will be a bit simpler. Twine will go from a center pole down to the ground on either side to form a triangle. I wasn’t sure what Flowers or vegetables were supposed to be on the trellises. What plants that were all about water might want to be on these trellises? I let the question simmer. Melons and cucumbers came to mind. This duo is all about the glory of water! These plants felt right, but later I was prompted to add Sweet Peas in some overlapping trellises. That addition gave me the ah ha feeling I was waiting for. When I plant the trellis rim, something else may be added or subtracted. Except for the original Venus Garden which we called “The Eight Garden” none of the designs for this garden have been cast in stone. To complete planning for the trellises, I went through my seed catalogs and inventory of seeds bought in previous years to find the cucumber and melon varieties that felt right for the job. I also ordered a big packet of mixed Grandiflora Sweet Pea seeds.

With the seven rows from the center of the garden, I sensed that with all the architecture of the trellises on the outside of the garden, maybe there would be more connecting strands ABOVE the rows to the center of the garden too. I looked for the right plant for the actual rows and some other watery plant that would grow along the twine above the rows.

When the Angels said about the Phoenix Rising version of the Venus Garden, “Plant every flame colored Flower you can grow,” it was easy to go through seed catalogs and pick out seeds. This was a year when I went through books and seed catalogs a lot before getting any clicks. Every plant needs water to live, but what Flowers and Vegetables that don’t actually grow in water still really sing of WATER? Most plants did not feel quite right for these rows. I finally let it go and waited. One day I knew Parsley was the plant for the rows and vining Nasturtiums were to be grown on the twine above.

This drove the next question; Where do these Nasturtiums get planted to encourage them to climb on the twine and not just cover the ground? Do they start in the center of the garden and go out or do they start at the edge and grow in? This question led to the question of what was in the center of the garden.

I felt that in the center of the garden there had to be some water, a literal container of water, maybe with some water plant growing in it. I thought about putting fish in the container, but that felt like, well, a red herring. I considered what plant was supposed to be in there. This was the most symbolic place in the garden and perhaps the most important plant choice. I wondered about Lotus. Lotus felt wonderful, that or Cardinal Flower. I decided I would seek out Lotus first and then move to Cardinal Flower if the Lotus proves difficult to come by.

Having settled on a container of water for the center of the garden, I could get back to the Nasturtiums. I decided the Nasturtiums could grow around the water container and out along the twine from the center of the garden towards the rim. The way I could do this came to me in sort of a daydream.I am going to put a wooden half barrel in the center of the garden, fill it with the kind of poor soil Nasturtiums loves, then put a slightly smaller water container on top of that with the Lotus or Cardinal Flower in it. All around the edge of the wooden barrel, I will plant the Nasturtium seeds. Then I will tie lines from the barrel out to the trellises. I had to laugh when I envisioned this network of twine because no one will be able to walk in this garden all summer because of all this twine. Crawl maybe, but now walk. So be it! I am just satisfied that from their place in an elevated barrel the Nasturtiums will be more inclined to take off onto the twine lines than if I grew them at ground level. Plus, I will be able to move them onto the twine manually if they droop over the barrel towards the ground.

Early in the design process I had drawn a spiral of plants from the water barrel out to the trellis outer rim. Now I feel like that is not going to be necessary. I will wait until planting time to see if that is something the Angels still want. Right now, it feels like enough will be going on without this extra dimensional element, but at planting time we will know for sure. The fun thing is that no matter what gets planted, the garden will end up being a lot more beautiful than I can even imagine. This is one of the reasons I am better able to let go of last year’s Venus Garden than I used to be. I have found that, year after year, the Angels always come up with a new design that completely enchants us all. No matter how attached I was to the previous garden, and the “Don’t Worry-Bee Happy” garden was glorious, I know this one will be just as wonderful. This cooperation has helped me so much to go with the flow of the seasons. I really can’t recommend working with the Angels and Elementals highly enough!

A swatch of earth, a couple packets of seeds, a request to work more consciously with the Angels and Elementals and a willingness to fork a few handfuls of Earth. That’s all you need for a great festive season of celebration. These partners really are that good!

I give Emily Dickinson and the bees the last word.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,-
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

One of the things I like most about life is that we never know the effect of any small gesture of kindness. When this life is said and done, each of us may find out that a smile to a sad woman in the line at the grocery store or some other small moment of acknowledging our common humanity was the action that mattered most in our whole long lives. I love that.

Not only does it help deflate my grandiose notions that anything worth doing is worth doing in a big way, but it also encourages me to keep going with small acts of kindness. Yesterday I had a great opportunity for small kindnesses. The two fifth grade classes in William’s school recently decided to knit two “Afghans for Afghans” after they read ‘The Breadwinner’, a book about a ten year old girl growing up in present day Afghanistan. Heather Gallagher, the darling fifth grade teacher who had William in her class last year, asked me to come help teach the thirty fifth graders to knit. Heather gathered sixty #10 needles and lots and lots of wool. Our plan was to have each child knit a simple square for the afghan. We began the project by spending Monday evening casting stitches onto every child’s needles with the wool color of their choice. Then we knit a row or two on each child’s square since it is that first tight row after casting on that is so difficult to get off the needle and potentially so discouraging for the novice knitter. Yesterday, Heather had us work with half the fifth graders for one period and half for another period. When I got to the school, that first group was waiting for me, fifteen upturned faces with their needles pointing in all directions and everyone squirming, squirming, squirming because they had just been to the library and consequently were full of energy. What to say? What to do? What to show them?

I taught myself to knit in tenth grade. I spent that winter driving around in an ancient convertible with a group of teenagers. I knit them each a pair of mittens from my assigned place in the back seat. I can remember the winter wind blowing my hair and the yarn all around and all of us exhilarated that one of us had a driver’s license. This is a fond memory, but not much help for figuring out how to teach kids to knit.

So…… I just plunged in. I gave a general demonstration of holding the work in your left hand and sticking the needle in here and looping it around the back needle before pulling it down and off there. Then Heather and I and a wonderfully helpful aide started going from child to child to work with each one until they got it.

And oh my! They did get it! There wasn’t a soul in either class that didn’t spend our time together working with intense and completely earnest determination. One by one each child got the rhythm of the basic knit stitch. And what a moment that was for each of them. And then as they knit stitch after stitch, some a little peculiar, but all as earnestly done, it was a good chance to let them know that their effort mattered more than how much they got done or if what they did had some funny puckers and bobbles. When someone started a row with forty stitches and ended with forty seven it was a chance to say, “Not to worry! This is a one of kind afghan and that will be great.” And when kids dropped stitches I could say, “Not to worry! These can be picked up later. The afghan is going to be a sort of crazy quilt so the loving effort not the shape of the swatches is what matters most.”

The boys were as completely invested in this project as the girls. No one registered this as something only girls did, though many spoke of their grannies and what rhymes their grannies used for knitting and how fast their grannies could knit. I felt so lucky to be there. It was clear that some kids who generally found school a challenge had found a real competency with knitting. What a gift to help them discover that they were naturals with knitting needles. There were cheers when someone finished a row and cheers when someone got their first stitch done without my hands on their hands. It was so little effort for so much joy. It reminded me of an additional point about acts of kindness, regardless of their importance or lack thereof, it’s fun to be kind.

I have been fretting a bit about whether my encouragements to you to do a gardening project with the Angels and Elementals is off putting because each of you already has ways you are connecting to our common divinity and don’t need a Nosey Parker telling you what to do. In truth, I don’t know how to encourage you. I only know the Angels and Elementals want me to do this. I have thought about just keeping on describing my work to design this year’s gardens, but I worry that these descriptions of all Green Hope Farm’s complicated garden designs and projects make most people want to throw in the trowel, not start a garden. To say that everything I do is built on the same simple steps as when my garden was a big planter out front of my first apartment, might sound as suspect as showing yesterday’s new knitters an Aran Island sweater and saying, “This is just more of the same stitches that you learned today.” TRUE but maybe not motivating.

So maybe I must simply rest in knowing that for some reason the Angels and Elementals want me to keep on giving informercials for them. Some of my infomercials will probably be really obnoxious and some may encourage you to follow that nudge and plant a big pot of some gorgeous Flower or Herb or Vegetable in celebration of our common divinity. I only hope you have as much fun in your gardens this summer, whatever their size and shape, as those new knitters had with their knitting yesterday.